I blame all these coffee mugs, flower
pots, cartoons, posters and greeting cards with Holstein cows on them
for the declining consumption of beef in this country. And I don't think
that Miss Piggy helped the pork producers either. Let me explain.
I
used to raise rabbits. Lots of them. Raising rabbits is easy, most of
your time is taken up building new hutches. The gestation period is only
one month, the females are always pregnant and the bucks show up ready
for action as often as a goose goes barefoot. I sold the fryers, cleaned
and wrapped, to the locals who had acquired a taste for rabbit meat in
their younger and much poorer days in Oklahoma, Missouri and such
during the not-so-Great Depression. I had one regular customer who was
so hopping crazy about rabbit meat that he ordered a dozen a month. That
was until he came out to our little one acre farm one day to pick up
his order instead of me delivering it, as usual. While he was there I
showed him all my little bunnies. After that day the man never bought
another rabbit from me ever again. "Couldn't stand to eat anything so
cute," he explained.
That is why we
don't eat the Easter Bunny but we do eat turkey on Thanksgiving. A
rabbit is too cute to eat but the turkey is such an ugly animal we
figure it deserves it.
Why do you
really think that chicken is so popular? Because it tastes good? Hah!
People eat chicken because it's ugly. They don't get indigestion because
they ate something cute. Rich, old ladies get upset about seeing an
advertisement in a magazine showing a pitiful veal calf in a cage and
when they die they leave their entire estates to a money-hungry group
trying to save the cute little things. Replace the picture of the veal
calf with a chicken in a cramped cage and the money collectors would
have to get real jobs.
The
same is true of hunting. Animal rightists are up in arms about hunters
shooting deer, with their sweet eyes and Bambi like behavior. Shoot
something mean and ugly, like your mother in law, and see if anybody
really cares. Remember how every newspaper and T.V. network in the
country carried the story of the clubbing of the baby harp seals? Step
on a bunch of slimy snails on your front walkway and see if it makes
national news. Why? Because seals are cute and snails are ugly and
gross.
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